Today I decided to do some shopping because I got one of those good coupons where I could essentially save 20% on anything due to the amount of store point credits I could get. In this case it was the PC Optimum Points program. For this deal it was one of my favorite where for every $50 you spend you essentially get $10 back. So with a bit of planning I knew that I could walk out of $50 worth of stuff for virtually free. On top of this some items have additional points that you could get which sweetened the deal more.
In the end the bill was $51.90 and with my $50 credit I only had to pay $1.90. With all that said I still have a ton of credit leftover for the next time I see a great deal at this supermarket. Although in this case many people would say that is silly to keep a credit balance of sort as you should spend it all right away. It`s not like you get interest or anything. While that is true in many ways I think psychologically it can help you become a better shopper as well.
For me personally I have always found that if you have some kind of positive balance here you tend to not want to shop in a bad way because you want to see the fruits of your labor. Like here getting all this stuff for virtually free is a great way to encourage you to keep spending wisely. It`s just like a savings account where if you have nothing in there what are the odds that you will be super motivated to make it grow more? Usually when people see a zero savings balance they tend to think why bother even trying to build it up. For me I find this can be the same with spending your points wisely as well.
On another note too I have often found holding off from purchasing a lot of stuff encourage these store programs to give you better deals like this too as to them they want you in the store. So in some sense that could act as the positive interest gain as well.